The late Ruqaiya Hasan was an enthusiastic but exacting reader of Vygotsky: she reproached him for lacking a theory of language use, for using an asocial model of education without class variation in semantic code, and above all for using an atomistic unit of analysis, namely lexical word meaning. In this paper, I take up these criticisms and…

The dominance of English in scientific production raises issues in relation to certain responsibilities of Swedish universities, linked to the dissemination of knowledge and the development of the Swedish language. In light of this, the article deals with Swedish-language summaries (SLSs) in English-language doctoral theses. It treats the SLS as…

Prevalent approaches to classroom languaging and bilingual education interpret the practices of multilingual groups of people through a monolingual lens that obscures the fluid languaging and semiotic practices of contemporary communities who engage in dynamic semiotic and linguistic practices, rather than 'add' one language to another in the form…

Over the past few decades, there has been an increased awareness of the strategic role of indigenous African languages in multilingual South Africa. This article discusses the strategic role that indigenous languages could and should play in the promotion of multilingual South Africa. The article pays attention to bilingual education and the…

We argue that 'academic language' should not be understood as technical components associated with a 'register', and that instead we must attend to its enregisterment. Enregisterment relies upon language ideologies and models of personhood, requiring attention to social components of 'academic language' beyond lexico-grammar. We draw on…

In this article, we establish direct links between language policy on the one hand and assessment in multilingual contexts on the other hand. We illustrate the bi-directional relationship with the examples of the USA, Canada, and the Basque Country. That comparison is placed in the context of the changing views about the use of languages in…

This article is the guest editors' introduction to the special issue "Language in Epistemic Access: Mobilising Multilingualism and Literacy Development for More Equitable Education in South Africa". The issue offers complementary perspectives on improving epistemic access for all learners but especially those whose home language does not…

This paper reflects on the state of educational language policy two decades into a post-Apartheid South Africa caught between official multilingualism and English. The focus is on the national language-in-education policy (LiEP) that advocates additive bi/multilingualism, and a provincial counterpart, the language transformation plan (LTP). Using…

The authors of papers in this special issue are in agreement that if schools are to reverse underachievement among rural and township students in the South African context the instructional space must be expanded to include students' and teachers' multilingual repertoires together with a focus on explicitly demystifying how academic language…

It is a long-standing and commonly held belief in the United Kingdom and elsewhere that the use of elite forms of language reflects superior intellect and education. Expert opinion from sociolinguistics, however, contends that such a view is the result of middle-class bias and cannot be scientifically justified. In the 1960s and 1970s, such…

In this article, I explore language identities and processes of negotiation concerning parts of these identities as seen by a group of students from a bilingual mathematics classroom. A collection of 10 students' individual writings on the questions "What language do you use during group work in your mathematics class and why?" is…

From the cognitive perspective of embodiment and relying mostly on the powerful and revealing tool of metaphor, we approach the issue of education in the Obama administration's discourse trying to unveil the ideological preferences hidden behind the use of the different metaphors. It is assumed that this body of metaphors will contribute to the…

This paper examines bilingual children's use of language inside and out of the minority language classroom. A total of 145 children between 8 and 11 years of age, attending 16 bilingual Welsh-English primary schools in North Wales, responded to questionnaires (supplemented by classroom observations) requesting information about their language…

The central role played by language in mediating school experience and the prestige accorded to standard language varieties within the field of education provide the broad rationale for this paper. This qualitative study, based on a friendship focus-group design, was conducted in two groups of 12-year-old children from contrasting "ideal…

Although the Lao People's Democratic Republic has speakers of up to 230 different languages belonging to four ethnolinguistic families, the Lao Government's policy as stated in its Education Law is that Lao is the official language of education at all levels. This creates a challenging situation for teachers in ethnic minority villages throughout…